Introduction
When I wash my son’s hair I tell him to put his head back and he won’t get shampoo in his eyes. His natural reaction of course is to put his head forward and rub his eyes every time the water starts to flow and as a result he panics, opens his eyes and soap gets in and the screaming starts. This illustrates the difference between trusting and trying.
Paul has been highlighting his disagreements with those who say you need to keep the law of God (the tryers) and himself and others who say that Jesus is enough (the trusters). Martin Luther, the guy who started the Reformation in the 16th Century put it like this. “Law says “Do this”. The Gospel says “Christ has done it all””. It’s the difference between trusting and trying.
The Galatians have been hoodwinked by false teaching which is leading them to live their lives in bondage again having gained their freedom. He describes them as foolish. If you discover the best way to achieve something and then you choose another way, it’s foolish. It’s a bit like having been given a grappling hook to get over the prison fence when you have just discovered you are going to be freed next week. It would be madness to use your own effort to scale the wall when you can rely on the person in charge to free you. You just wouldn’t do it. But that’s what these people are doing. They learned to trust in Jesus and now they are going back to relying on their own efforts.
So what does Paul do? He appeals to 3 things:
• Their own experience (v 2-5)
• Scripture (v 6-9)
• And the destination of trusting versus trying (v 10-14)
Their Own Experience (v 2-5)
Paul asks them a key question to which he knows the answer because he was there when it happened. Did they keep the Law of God and receive the Holy Spirit as a reward or did they believe and receive the Holy Spirit? Every single Galatian Christian knows they received the Holy Spirit when they were born again. Not because of their own efforts but because of what Jesus did. This is their experience. This is your experience.
You see if you are relying on your own effort to better yourself you can never tell when you might achieve it. Is it when you give up swearing? Is it when you become less angry or violent? Or is it when you stop lusting after the latest bit of porn which is doing the rounds on the spur? You can never quite tell when you have done enough so you live in fear of never being good enough. Paul tells them not to be stupid and go back to that way of measuring their worth. Don’t live by trying. If you want to be fully human don’t do it.
Why do I say fully human? Many of us are pleased to reach physical maturity. Some even go to the gym to enhance this. Fine. Many of us are happy to reach a maturity of knowledge or intelligence. Some even spend all their lives learning and trying to grow in this way and that is fine. There is nothing wrong with physical maturity or having a mature intelligence or knowledge of things. As stewards of what God has given us it’s honouring to him if nothing else to reach our potential in both areas. But you aren’t just a body and you aren’t just a mind. You are spiritual beings too. If you want to be fully human – to experience the full life Jesus promised – you need to look after all three. Aim for spiritual maturity. However, spiritual maturity only comes through the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. The Holy Spirit makes you like Jesus. Fully human! The complete man. A man who lives and walks by faith in God not his own physical efforts.
So for Paul, neglecting faith and resorting to your own efforts to live your life is like becoming a toddler again with muscles. This too has been the experience of those who have abandoned living by trusting for living by trying.
Paul then puts the question another way – again he knows the answer. Has God performed miracles through them by their own efforts or by their faith in God? The Holy Spirit living in us through faith gives us the power to perform miracles. Those miracles range from a radically changed life to healing, to being able to love your enemy to being generous when you were as tight as Victor Meldrew before. Often it’s the miracle of being able to keep going in circumstances like this.
So what’s our problem? Many of us think just having faith is too easy. That we get nothing for nothing. So we become insecure and think we have to please God. But when we come to him and trust he could not be more pleased with us. We are put right with God through faith.
This was the experience of the Galatian Christians which some of them were in danger of forgetting. Don’t forget ever how you came to Christ. That it was through trusting that you received the Spirit not through your own efforts. And if you have not put your faith in Jesus you will be miserable and unfulfilled – not fully human – until you do.
The Experience of Scripture (v 6-9)
Having appealed to their life experiences, Paul then appeals to Scripture to show that what has happened to them is real. Whenever something happens to us spiritually we should go to scripture and ask “Did it happen in the Bible?” If it happened to people in the Bible it can happen to us.
Paul’s opponents were saying “The Law has always been the way to be right with God, just look at the Old Testament”. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this because we don’t have a lot of time, but Paul uses scripture to prove they are wrong and to prove that the experience of the Galatian Christians has been God’s way all along.
Paul’s opponents taught that Moses brought the Law of God and it’s that which reigns supreme. Paul though goes back even further to Abraham, the father of us all. “How was he made right with God?” Paul asks. He wasn’t made right with God through trying. In fact whenever he tried his own way it was disastrous. God made two promises to Abraham. First that his offspring would bless the whole world through Jesus. And secondly that although he had no son, he would be blessed with one. Abraham believed these promises and Genesis tells us, “it was credited to him as righteousness”. He was made right with God, not by trying but by trusting.
Verses 7 & 9 tell us here that to believe in God’s promises like Abraham and live as if you believe is to be like him. In other words you too will be right with God if you believe he died for you, lives in you and you live as if you believe it.
Are you right with God? As you sit there you know the answer. Stop trying so hard and start trusting him.
Trusting Versus Trying – The Outcome (v 10-14)
The final part of Paul’s argument to win over the doubters is to discuss the outcome of trusting versus the outcome of trying.
Verse 12 tells us, like Martin Luther, that Law and faith are opposites. Let me ask you a question? Do you want every promise which is in the Bible? Believe me you don’t. The Bible promises in Deuteronomy 27:26 “Cursed is the man who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out”. That’s a promise you really don’t want. How do you get cursed? By relying on anything else but Jesus to save you and help you change. What does the curse consist of?
The Flagship Hotel in Texas, is built next to the water. Large plate-glass windows adorn the ground-level dining room. Occasionally, guests came up with the "brilliant" idea of fishing from their balconies, located directly above the dining room.
Using heavy sinkers, they would cast their line into the water. Unfortunately, they were sometimes too short and the leaded sinkers would swing down, shattering the $600 windows. After spending large sums without solving the problem, the hotel management finally stumbled on a simple solution. They removed the "No Fishing from Balcony" signs from the rooms! Firstly, there is something in us which makes us want to disobey a law when we see it.
Not being able to be good enough is a curse which leads to guilt and a feeling that we are worthless. And of course the biggest curse of the Law is that it can never repair the damage done, it can only condemn the offender to death. The Law of course was never meant to do this. The Law is perfect, righteous and is designed to lead us to Jesus as the solution. It is not there to make us try harder.
Habakkuk 2:4 tells us the way to be right with God is to live by faith. To believe. To trust. What can we trust in? Verse 13 has the answer. Jesus has taken the curse which the Law put upon us – condemnation and death – onto himself and suffered those consequences for us.
Fiorello LaGuardia was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and WWII. One bitterly cold night in January 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. "It’s a real bad neighbourhood, your Honour," the man told the mayor. "She’s got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson." LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said "I’ve got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions—ten dollars or ten days in jail." But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero saying: "Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. ’Mr Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.’"
$47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren, fifty cents of that amount being contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner, while some seventy petty criminals, and New York City policemen chipped in the rest.
Just like that lady we have each been caught red-handed, with nothing to say for ourselves. A just God knew that the penalty had to be paid, and he gave his most precious treasure, his beloved son, Jesus Christ to pay the penalty of our sin. But he didn’t just redeem us from the curse, he also showered us with blessing, giving us life more abundantly, life in the Spirit, which beats $47.50 any day.
Truly with God the blessing is always more powerful than the curse. And God has done everything so that we can share in the blessing. Don’t put it off. Reject the curse which is upon you. The curse of trying instead of trusting. And receive the blessing of being able to walk in faith and trust.
